In early Chinese thought, heaven was considered "round" and earth "square." Westerners from St. Anselm to Kant taught that round and square are opposites. I will explore the connections between east and west (round and square) in a blog that takes seriously the little details of our lives. Round and square; east and west—never the twain shall meet (it has been said). Except when they do, and that is the whole point of this blog.

From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again). *Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Soil and Identity Although Granet contends that the Yellow Springs did not
constitute a cult, that is not so with the earth and the reincarnations that
spring from it. Granet again waxes eloquent in the following passage as he
describes the relationship of rural people to the soil. The rhetorical tone of
Granet’s writing is striking, and it is sometimes easy to forget that he is one
of the most serious sinologists (and social theorists) ever to pick up a pen. In particular, Granet is struck by the rich references
to the land found in many early Chinese texts, and has harnessed the rhetoric
of those texts in his own writing. The fundamental connection of people to the
soil goes far beyond the agricultural work in which they are engaged. It was a
[profound] relationship that forged an identity with place…and its cultivated
soil.

It was otherwise with the beliefs about Mother Earth and
reincarnations. In the Festivals, in order to get into touch in any way they
could with the Holy Place, the members of a rural community maintained among
themselves a sense of belonging to the soil which was and has remained the most powerful of all the sentiments their race has known.[1]

As the drift of my own remarks makes clear, it is not a
very great step to move from identity with the soil to the development of a
sense of place, a sense of belonging. The saying below is far deeper than
merely “the dying fox turns its head toward its native hill.” It is a sense of location, place, and dying
where one has forged one’s roots—where one grew up in a close domestic setting,
chanted at seasonal festivals, married, cultivated the earth, and grew old
while watching new generations take his place. It is a concept of “home” that
was powerful throughout China’s past. It persists to this very day.

A saying expressed it forcefully: “The dying fox turns
its head towards its native hill.” There
was a kind of mutual belongingness between the country and its natives. The
solidarity uniting the members of a local group was in essence territorial; it
seemed to be founded upon the ties between each individual and the Earth common
to all.[3]

Clumsy though the saying is, “mutual belongingness” does
give a sense of the complex ideas and practices that form identification with
place. There is a sense of the soil needing the people, just as the people need
the soil. The sense of territoriality to which Granet refers is spiritual. It
goes far beyond mere familiarity to encompass powerful feelings of communion,
with deeply felt bonds reaching in each direction. But it is far more than the individual that
is involved in these feelings. It is, in essence, a sense of group identity
toward place. The collective bond with the soil lies at the heart of what would
later be seen as national identity.

Just as can be seen in many other powerful social processes, awareness is not an
everyday occurrence. One does not ordinarily “see” society, or even perceive
its vaguest outlines. It is usually vague, and defined by equally vague
articulations. Instead, it takes powerful acts of communion
to bring a conception of it to the fore. The collective songs and marriages did
just that, for they not only united the sexes—reconnecting yin and yang—but
connected the linked genders to the soil itself, to the earth from which both
sprang.

In reality, the awareness of it appeared only when the
collective marriages were celebrated upon the earth. By a transfer of emotion
these sexual communions in touch with the earth were communions with Earth.[5]

It does not take a large intellectual leap to reach the
next point. The holy place was the very center of “earthness,” and the site for
the linkage of gender, domestic orders, society, and nature. It was a root of
fertility in numerous ways—from the cool, rushing yin waters that presaged the yang
summer to the chanting interactions of boys and girls in anticipation of sexual
unions that would give further power to the social order.

A complex and powerful sentiment caused the Holy Place to
be venerated as the origin of all fertility and all matrimonial alliance—a
total fertility whose manifestations did not at all call forth the definite
idea of creation, an alliance in the widest sense and superior to the specific
idea of kinship.[7]

“Total fertility” is a useful phrase for the holy place,
for it goes beyond individual originators of family lines and the most
“distinguished” of their ancestors. It goes beyond narrow alliances and kin
groups altogether. Much like the sharing that takes place as part of the
seasonal festivals—with one’s bounty freely given without territorial
jealousy—it is all-encompassing and catholic in its ability to unite the
elements of society with nature in a kind of cosmogonic fertility that both
creates and gives order to the universe and its elements.

Following the rhetoric of his earlier passages, Granet
continues to stress the “indeterminate” nature of the holy place. Indeed, it
was both indeterminate and
all-encompassing. Particularity would stunt it. Note the manner in which Granet
describes the creative power and special attributes imparted to the
collectivity by the holy place. This is not Lourdes. This is not, to use a
Chinese example, a temple network with specific locations for specific concerns.
The holy place had an indeterminate, yet concentrated, flow of energy. The
force of that energy was enormous. The particular object of its power was
general: the collectivity itself. Its very diffuseness gave it the ultimate
power. For that reason, it was venerated in neutral forms, as are all of the
truly powerful forces in the universe. It was the very foundation for the
fertility and growth of society.

The power with which the holy place was invested remained
indeterminate in nature; it bestowed upon the totality of beings every kind of
fertilizing force (the seeds of spring and of new life) without having the
special attributes of creative power; it bestowed upon the collectivity of
neighboring families a general sense of harmony and a common faith in the
future of their Stock, without having the attributes of the originator of a
family. The Holy Place was venerated in a neutral form, and rather as a supreme Chieftain and with the attributes of a Regulating Power. Thus it was in no way
the site of domestic festivals, but that of the federal festivals of initiation and marriage.[9]

The sites of which Granet writes above are collective,
federal, and powerful. They are the location of the very most important
activities in the social and universal orders—initiation and marriage, birth
and social gathering. Through the sense of harmony and fertility thus
generated, society was re-energized and reborn. That rebirth is a thing of the
soil, and of “Mother Earth” herself. The very picture of society that Granet
recreates from his Chinese texts is engendered by the cultivation of the soil
and the gathering of human beings at particularly poignant moments in
spiritually charged places.